Five ways to make sure we never lose a plane again

THE world has been transfixed by the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which seems to have crashed in the far reaches of the southern Indian Ocean. But how can we lose a plane in an age of always-on surveillance? Some tracking measures already exist and others are under consideration.

Flight-tracking over the oceansThat flight MH370 could not be tracked with GPS is astonishing. The accident is likely to prompt the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to order mandatory tracking of aircraft on ocean routes. Satellite firms already sell spare satellite bandwidth to airlines so they can provide in-flight connectivity. The lost plane had a satellite antenna but did not use it to transmit technical data. But the transmitter pinged an hourly signal to an Inmarsat satellite and those radio pulses were used to work out a rough flight path for the missing plane. Pinging location data as well would only have cost one dollar an hour. Other providers of in-flight entertainment and seat-back connectivity could send out tracking signals as well: Panasonic, for instance, offers broadband and could provide data pings. And the Iridium satellite network is launching 66 new satellites that will supply constant aircraft location data via a service called Aireon from 2017.

Smarter black boxesWhy do aircraft flight recorders not routinely stream their data via satellite to servers on the ground? The stumbling block is a lack of affordable bandwidth to transmit the thousands of flight parameters that would be required. A much better idea called "triggered transmission" has been hatched by an industry working group led by the BEA, the French accident investigation organisation. The aim is to use avionics software to recognise conditions that suggest an accident is imminent, such as sudden rolling combined with a stall warning – and then transmit recent black box flight data via satellite. That way only planes in trouble will send out data on their status and location. An algorithm could then narrow down the plane's last known location to within 11 kilometres. The ICAO will discuss the idea in a meeting in Montreal, Canada, in October.

Extended recording timeThe Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flew for 6 hours after deviating from its planned route. With just 2 hours of recording time, the cockpit voice recorder is unlikely to reveal much about the cause of the incident. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is now considering moving to a 15-hour cockpit voice recorder.

Longer-lasting underwater pingsFlight recorders carry an underwater location device that emits an ultrasound pulse once a second for 30 days after it is submerged. EASA and the US Federal Aviation Administration are upping the battery lifetime to 90 days.

Ping louder for ocean flightsOne problem highlighted in the 2009 search for Air France flight 447 was the difficulty a submarine had in hearing its pinger: the batteries ran out before it was found. EASA suggests that a longer-range, lower-frequency 8.8 kilohertz pinger is attached to planes which regularly fly across oceans, in addition to the pingers on black boxes. It would extend the range from 1500 metres to 10.7 kilometres.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Five ways to trace a plane"

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